Thoughts on Red Tournament 2021

-I think that the qualifier rankings are better than what has been done in years past but still needs improvement if the goal is to continue doing these for the forseeable future. I am a huge fan of the fact that people with bad or meh pbs can be in a spot to get past the first round or two just by racing. Putting an incentive on racing is a good thing. With that being said, due to the fact that all that matters is best race TIME of your 12 qualifiers, the races can be fairly uncompetitive. Why should I care if I'm first or second if my time is gonna get a round 1 bye anyway? Why even bother continuing a race after an early death if I won't beat my best time? I don't hate the idea of making qualifiers an average of... say 10/12 race times in theory, but then that forces people to do races that they may not have time to do if they want to improve their seeding in the tournament. There isn't a perfect solution, and I don't dislike the current setup by any means. But I cannot help feeling like these are several people doing time trials together, not racing.

-I am concerned about burnout. Last year's tournament was a month and a half. Everyone was relieved when it ended. The collective mentality should not be "Oh, thank god the tournament is over", it should be looking back fondly at the funny, epic, or just noteworthy moments that took place during the tournament or during tournament preparation. Though, the Organizer/Admin team did rework the number of advancers per round to attempt to keep the length down, especially if the number of entrants swells.

-Instant Text Conundrum. Instant text makes races worse almost objectively, but it probably makes things more interesting for the viewer. The hope is/was that No Instant Text = Closer Races = More Exciting races, and for the racers, that is true. But several people have called IT-less boring in comparison (for viewing). However, 1) Instant Text blows 2) The runners' opinions are definitely more important than anyone else, and runners overwhelmingly favor IT-less 3) Instant Text blows

Overall Thoughts/Questions

How can we improve upon formatting for future years?
Are annual tournaments too frequent? How should things be shaken up (Re-Allowing IT, Randomized pots, Yellow Tournament, Custom Starter Tournament (Probably not a good idea))?